


No Wide Estates

by Brighid



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Future Fic, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-28
Updated: 2017-01-28
Packaged: 2018-09-20 10:09:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9486650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brighid/pseuds/Brighid
Summary: It still hurts, like the first night.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DiscontentedWinter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DiscontentedWinter/gifts).



The wintery air finds its way around the edges of the old blanket Stiles has wrapped around his shoulders and plucks at him until he’s all pebbled all over with gooseflesh. He thinks about going in, crawling into bed and sticking his cold feet against Derek’s warm thighs, thinks about sitting in the hallway between the kids’ bedrooms and just listening to them breathing. Thinks about going into the kitchen and trying to find the shitty whiskey he’s got hidden in the back of one of the kitchen cabinets for hot toddies. He doesn’t do any of those things, though. He just sits on the edge of the deck and stares up at the distant stars and tries to pretend his throat isn’t thick and his eyes aren’t burning.

The back screen door creaks and he hears Derek’s sure steps on the worn deck boards of the old house they’re still slowly renovating eight years on. Stiles scrubs at his eyes, a little, but he knows it’s futile. Even if he didn’t get all ugly-cry splotchy at the slightest provocation, Derek would smell the salt and the sour of his grief.

“Tomorrow,” Derek says gently, sitting down behind Stiles, surrounding him with his warmth and his bulk, forming a bulwark against the night and the wind and … almost everything, really. Stiles sinks slowly backwards, let’s himself lean heavy and hard. Derek makes a low, rumbling sound in the base his throat, and takes Stiles’ weight with practiced ease. He lifts a hand, traces tear tracks from along Stiles’ jaw with his thumb.

“Tomorrow,” Stiles agrees. Tomorrow marks one year since Noah Stilinski had a massive coronary event pulling a nine-year old kid out of Beacon River. One year since the beginning of two long weeks of hospital vigils and daily rounds of fear, anger and bargaining that eventually bought them nothing at all. The beginning of the end of everything, it had felt like at the time. “Some weeks I don’t think of him at all, anymore,” Stiles says finally, and his voice is a pale thread in the darkness. “I laugh and I do stupid shit and I bake cookies with the kids and I forget about him. And then some days, I feel like I can’t even breathe, I miss him so fucking much.” He turns his head and rubs his cheek against Derek’s shoulder.  
Derek doesn’t say anything at all, because he knows there is nothing to say. Instead, he wraps his arms tightly around Stiles and rocks them both slightly, side to side, the same way the wind is rocking the trees at the edge of the forest that borders their yard. They sit like that as one day ticks over into the next, and they sit there still as night slowly brightens into the soft grey of a cloudy morning. 

“I miss him, too,” Derek says finally, when he hears the girls stirring upstairs. “The girls will be up soon. How about we call them in sick, we call in sick, and we make blanket forts and watch movies all day?” he murmurs against Stiles’ ear.

“Okay,” Stiles says quietly. Derek stands, and pulls Stiles up, and leads him slowly into their house for breakfast. “Can we have chocolate chip pancakes, like Dad made?” Stiles asks as they walk into the kitchen. “Only less burnt, because, Jesus, that man could burn shit.” He laughs wetly and Derek leans in, kisses the curve of his mouth, the corner of his eye and then turns to get the mixing bowls from the cupboard while Stiles curls up in one of the kitchen chairs and watches in sleepy silence as the Stilinski Pancake Tradition continues.

Derek doesn’t burn a single one.

The End/The Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> Some days are good. Some days missing them is an ache.


End file.
